Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, is Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University and a professor of economics at the Harvard Kennedy School.

In Kennedy's time, we had a relatively coherent, values based foreign policy. Today, I cannot identify a foreign "policy" or any American values that could drive one. We certainly do not encourage democracy by supporting Saudi Arabia's hereditary based government. We do not defend liberty by enabling Israel's domination of the Palestinians. We do not help the poor cast "off the chains of poverty" by begrudging China's rise. I could go on, but the point is that America's foreign activities denote a lack of values that could be the foundation of a foreign policy and Professor Haussmann comments demonstrate an astonishing lack of awareness by the academy of our Washington based hypocrisy. Read more

I was very deeply moved by President Kennedy's address. I was young then,

Most Japanese are grateful for the strong commitment of the United States to security and freedom in East Asia. But when the income gap is widening as in Japan, an increasing number of people are robbed of decent living as the middle-class or living freezing in the cold of the winter on the street as in Japan, how can a country defend universal values without material means? And when reckless and blind "democracy promotion policy", arising from universal values, gives birth to chaos and turmoils instead of order and prosperity, let alone democracy, in many parts of the world, we must stop and muse. Read more

In JFK's day, a generation of men and women that literally fought fascism as soldiers, sailors and marines had set themselves to building a society that would allow their children to prosper. They wanted, more than anything, to know that their children would never have to go to war, but, God forbid, if they did, they would have the most powerful military the world had ever seen behind them. They restrained this military and made it the handmaiden of democracy, because that is what they believed in, and, critically, had fought for side by side. The politicians -- like JFK, much of Congress, and members of state and local governments -- all had shared the same torturous hell their buddies still in the service had endured. They were, moreso than today, looking out of each other and each other's kids. They paid their fair share of taxes, and did so with a sense of pride. If they ran companies, they did not do everything in their power to deny a decent living to those working for them -- they probably shared a foxhole or a burning deck with those same people, or people like them, just 20 years before. They took pride in their communities, and built their schools so that their kids could enjoy great lives. Critically, when they said they would defend their allies -- often nations that fought beside them against the fascists -- they meant it. They hated war as only those who had been thru war could, but knew they had to stand ready to fight for what they believed in. And that's what made them so potent.

Fast forward some 50 years. Few of the political leaders in the U.S. have served -- we've elected our second draft-dodging president (3 if you count G. w. Bush's failure to show up for duty while he was in the AFR as a dodge). Politicians everywhere do the bidding of corporations and financially powerful individuals who have formed cartels that dominate their respective industries and the U.S. government at every level. America has devolved into a plutocracy. There is no shared vision or shared sacrifice, except by the few -- less than 1% of the population -- that have stepped up and served. They are mostly dumbstruck looking at how this society's leaders conduct themselves. Corporate leaders will do anything to enrich themselves at a rate of compensation that is 100s of times that of the people who work in their companies. They readily ship jobs overseas, oblivious of the carnage left in the communities their parents worked so hard to build up. They stack boards with people who eagerly allow them to do so.

Trump is not an outlier. He is the personification of his generation -- greedy, bullying, self-satisfied and fawned upon by countless thousands of politicians, media personalities and academics, all of whom are supported by self-serving plutocrats like him.

The America of JFK's generation is dying off, leaving behind a spoiled offspring that is interested only in its own enrichment and aggrandizement. They don't serve. They do everything in their power to avoid paying taxes. They wall themselves off from the people working in jobs that provide less and less compensation to provide for their families.

I'm sure JFK would not recognize the America he left behind. It more resembles the Venezuela Prof. Hausmann left behind, before its descent into hell -- a plutocracy on a self-destructive course that will leave everyone wondering: How could this have happended here? This is not Trump's fault. He's the vanguard of a powerful force that's evolved over decades. This is what you get when a plutocracy emerges and takes the reins of government and society. We're converging onto the Russia/China model of command capitalism. Not to worry if you're a prof at Harvard, though. You're safe and secure in such a world, since you are a key element of the feeder system sustaining this new America, just as you've always been. Read more

Obama started with ideals but once he found himself elected he was powerless as neither GOP or DEMs cared much for his idealism. He was stranded as an outsider in Washington and did not have the practical ability to horse trade for what he wanted. But you cannot condemn something on the grounds it did not work in one particular circumstance.

The general criticism that words are meaningless if not put into action is a weak one because thoughts (and their outer expression words) always precede action.

Consider the rise of the USSR - what created it? Words. Words influencing the minds of millions of people. Marx's words. Lenin' words. Words of the general population as they discuss things among themselves. Words on television broadcasts. A case could be made that there is nothing more powerful than words. Read more

What if "American Greatness" has nothing to do with global leadership?

I think by now we can all conclude that the much feted "Global Leadership" wasn't based on "universal values", it was simply business.America did everything possible to increase its markets, maximize its profits, even when it meant leaving quite sizeable "collateral damage" behind.But every empire runs out of steam at the end, especially the hedonistic, self-serving ones.Moreover today in a globally integrated and interdependent world a "single global leader", "global policeman", "peace broker" or "exporter of democracy" has not only become obsolete, but it has become outright destructive.

Still America can become great again, there is still a chance to show a very important positive example to the rest of the world. In this global, integral world nobody can survive without mutually complementing collaboration, integrating very different people into a well functioning collective.America was supposed to be the gold standard of a "melting pot", facilitating such working, mutually complementing society.

The big problem with this piece is that all of us reading it know that Obama's oratory was up to Kennedy's standards and it cut no ice at all. fine words are meaningless. Gassing on about human rights loses friends and influences no one. Doing deals is fine. Nobody wants to listen to lectures or overblown preppie rhetoric. Read more

@ Mike Logan- Rights are only meaningful if linked to Remedies by a vinculum juris- a bond of law. However, this bond of law must be incentive compatible to be credible. Where there is no incentive to implement the remedy, no actual right has been created. It may appear that 'cheap talk' about universal rights or a liberal world order creates a positive atmosphere which, by itself, will yield a better 'correlated equilibrium'. However, history- e.g. Kennedy's grandiose rhetoric or, more recently, Obama's soaring oratory- has taught us a severe lesson. Cheap talk causes a 'separating equilibrium' based on 'costly signals' to be mistaken by vulnerable people for a pooling equilibrium. They are then induced to make catastrophic decisions. Take the Free Syrian Army or 'Arab Spring' protesters in Libya. Their fate is lamentable indeed. What Kennedy did to the people of South Vietnam when he toppled Diem or the misery he inflicted on the people of Cuba was just the tip of the iceberg. His overblown rhetoric destabilized the world and caused millions of avoidable deaths.By contrast, making pragmatic deals means that all parties can agree on an incentive compatible conflict resolution mechanism, or procedural system of justice, such that a genuine viculum juris exists between rights and remedies.Privileged people, whether within a nation, or within the international order, generally already have strong vinculum juris protection. The fact that they pretend that their rights are in fact universal is just a heartless con.True, at the margin, some bureaucracy can gain 'appropriable control rights' by fudging the issue as to whether a right is jurisdictional or universal, but this is not incentive compatible and soon crashes.Politicians like talking high falutin nonsense. So do bureaucrats. Only fools believe their rhetoric.It is important that vulnerable sections of society, national or global, chase away the windbags and insist that only pragmatic, incentive compatible, deals be the basis of the world order.One corollary is that 'mutli-dimensional' agreements- like TIPP- be scrapped because of the risk of 'McKelvey Chaos'. In fact this is already happening. TPP, with its human rights and environmental clauses has been junked because of 'agenda control' worries. Some people like Kennedy, some think he was a mendacious fraud who got into politics under the wing of McCarthy, lied to the American people about a missile gap and then punished a democratic revolution in Cuba. It was LBJ who got rid of Jim Crow. True, he doubled down on Vietnam but only because it was Kennedy's legacy.

I personally like Obama- there is a wonkish part of him which understands that U.S foreign policy is 'doing stupid s***t'' (his words). Still, it is not by oratory but careful lawyerly work that he can really contribute to public discourse in the coming years.The world wants no lectures from the US because, intoxicated by its own dream of greatness, it has been doing 'stupid s**t' since the time of Kennedy. Enough is enough. Read more

well, vivek, it depends upon who you are. your apparent contempt for talk of human rights leads me to suspect you are white, so i understand your opposition. were you a person of color, rights would be something meaningful to you. being white, they come naturally, and you need not fight for them. Read more

The American Dream did not morph into the American Nightmare overnight. It occurred in a decades long sleep lead by politicians who were only interested in securing a majority at the ballot box and no more, funded by business who lobbied for deregulation. For example the domestic airlines who lobbied for lax security and walk-on walk-off with flights that lead directly to 911

Half a dozen more may be trying to join the EU but so what, exactly what are they bringing other than a begging bowl and sometimes very dubious ethics which is what the last lot of aspirants turned up with. If you have not noticed those with their bowls have a propensity to get belligerent if they do not get their handouts and rapidly move to threats

So I suggest Ricardo that you stand on the corner with your pay in cash i a bucket offering it to all that turn up and see if there is not enthusiasm amongst those who pass by. It is a meaningless measurement

With all this stuff about ethics I almost forgot about IBM and its place in 1930s and 1940s Germany data processing of citizens demographics

Sadly, a great many of our fellow Americans have voted to allow Donald Trump to represent this country and its democracy to the world. No speech now, however carefully crafted, can erase that stain, or rectify this puerile and vulgar man's lack of character.

We have to face the fact, to paraphrase de Maistre, that our country may well have elected the president it deserves. Read more

I think even those who voted for Trump do not deserve him. They are essentially acting out of anger. Think back on your life of the dumbest thing you did while angry and if you are like me you are sure to regret it. Read more

"We were the children of the 1950s and John F. Kennedy's young stalwarts of the 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in defense of freedom. We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was not there when we fulfilled his promise. John F. Kennedy waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery, and in time we came by the thousands to fill those slopes with our white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind if that was truly the future he had envisioned for us."

Yes. The ideals of America have fallen to the floor. How did it happen though?

I would say it happened the moment business captured government - round about the time of Reagan. By the time Clinton was president (Bill, not Hillary) the American ideals had all been replaced by one slogan - "It's the economy, stupid". Well, most people don't give the last word in that saying enough attention - because it is simply stupidity to think that if you just grow the economy everything will be fine. It won't - you will become hated (see Islam and America), distrusted (see Russia and America), at odds with your population (see NSA spying and inequality, unfree (see the press in America) and eventually poor (see standard of living for those who work blue collar type work).

Unfortunately Trump is not the man for the job. Quite clearly he is the devil incarnate in world of liberty (for Mexicans) , equality (drop corporate taxes) and fraternity (everything out of his mouth). But I think we would do well to consider that is the symptom of the thinking that dominated American thinking since Reagan - that if GDP grows 10% in the next four years everything else does not matter. Read more

Thanks, Prof. Hausmann for this exceptional piece, even for PS standards. From my point of view this comes very close to a best approach. My thinking on this issue has similarities and extensions. It can be found in my account's biography. A difference I see, is that today's leadership should pursue mostly subgroup liberation. Kennedy aimed at best-for-all, but this trend is currently weak, according to some theory and observation. Subgroup liberation is done, but so far bare the explicit rule of thumb: "Subgroup liberation demands fairness and mutual compensation," making it a risky endeavour. Read more

PS On Air: The Super Germ Threat

NOV 2, 2016

In the latest edition of PS On
Air
, Jim O’Neill discusses how to beat antimicrobial resistance, which
threatens millions of lives, with Gavekal Dragonomics’ Anatole Kaletsky
and Leonardo Maisano of
Il Sole 24 Ore.

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